There weren’t many prisoners locked up at this time and Ranowr quickly found the one he wanted by the smell of his bucket. He walked slowly through the cool dimness of the half-underground prison, beneath the arched stone ceiling that made this like a tunnel. Iron grills showed to either side.
“You there! You’re a Mrem?” he asked softly, turning his face away to keep an eye in either direction and letting the wooden buckets in his hand clatter a little to cover the words.
“I am,” came a tired voice; the words were oddly accented, but easily understandable.
“Who are you? How did you come here?”
“My name is Canar Trowr, I am a scout. Your soldiers captured me. That’s all I’ll tell you.”
“My soldiers?” Ranowr said with a laugh. “Do you think I’m a Liskash? Do I sound like a Liskash? Do I smell like a Liskash?”
“You sound funny,” Canar Trowr answered. “But any Mrem who works willingly for the Liskash is an enemy and I would kill you as soon as I’d kill them. Traitor,” he added.
“Willingly! None of us work willingly for the Liskash. We work so they won’t kill us or starve us or burn us with their minds or eat our kits. I was born here, all of us were and we were told that we were created by the Liskash and only tolerated because we work. If we don’t work, if we try to fight we are killed.
“But where are you from?” Ranowr demanded eagerly. “How did wild Mrem come to be? Did you escape from the great goddess’s domain?”
The prisoner laughed outright, not a sound often heard here.
“Your great goddess lied,” he said flatly. “Hard to believe of the noble Liskash, but they lied. They’re not gods. They never created us. There are thousands of free Mrem and I am one of them.”
Ranowr thought for a moment, stunned. Not gods, the Liskash are not gods.
He forced the thought away and bent his mind to more practical matters.
“I don’t know how many thousands would be. I know hundreds, how many hundreds is that?”
“Ten hundreds is a thousand,” the prisoner said. “And we are more than ten times that many. We journey toward a land of Mrem hundreds of thousands strong.”
Ranowr caught his breath. So many, unimaginably many. He heard the prisoner shift his weight and chains clinked.
“Can you get me out of here? I will lead you to them. You could come with us.”
“Get that dung cart moving!” a guard shouted.
Ranowr hastily emptied the bucket and shoved it back through the hole.
“I’ll try,” he whispered and moved on.
Through his shock and the whirling awe of a world huger than he could have imagined, resolve hardened in him. He would free the prisoner, and Canar Trowr would lead all of them to freedom. Now that they had a place to go.
“Today when you deliver my message you are to stand straight and look Captain Thress in the eye,” Hisshah commanded.
She was smiling, quite happy at the thought of Thress’s reaction to such boldness. She’d have to be hard on Ranowr’s heels to make certain the captain didn’t kill him, because she intended the slave to be her messenger every day.
Her message was much the same as the previous one, his orders were approved with minor changes. But, oh! how he would burn.
The damn smerp means to kill me, Ranowr thought bitterly.
He blinked. This was the first time, even in his thoughts, that he’d been so disrespectful. But he felt justified. Thress would undoubtedly beat him again.
“Yes, young goddess,” he said aloud. He took the wax tablet from her and trotted off.
This time Thress went at him with claws and teeth. Ranowr dodged and backed, covering his face with his arms and letting a swipe knock him down; then the kicks started, the killing claws poised.
It was almost worth it to hear the frustrated rage in Thress’s hisses, the rage that could not be assuaged. Would still scorch like lava even if Ranowr died.
Once again, more quickly this time, Hisshah intervened; Ranowr coughed cautiously, felt no broken ribs grating, and stood blinking in the bright dry sunlight. As they returned to the practice field Ranowr could tell that she was elated by the captain’s humiliation.
“Tonight you will deliver a message to the gate guards, I’m changing the password. You will do this every night.”
“He will kill me, young goddess,” Ranowr said.
“No, he won’t,” she said blithely, with a lithe flex of tail and neck. “He wouldn’t dare. If he were to displease me so much the great goddess would punish him. He is being disciplined and he knows it. He would be very unwise to resist his punishment. Don’t worry, I won’t let him go too far. It is my plan that he should come to recognize you and dread your coming. That should please you, Ranowr. That a Liskash will dread your coming.”
She laughed gaily. Ranowr throttled a snarl with a massive effort of will that left his male ruff bristling; thankfully a Liskash wouldn’t know what that meant. The hideous thing was that it was almost worth it to think of the guard captain trembling in fear at the sight of a Mrem face.
Nevertheless, Thress will kill me.
Necessarily, slaves were better at reading their masters than the reverse, and Thress was on the verge of madness. Ranowr would have to find a way out soon. First he must find a way to kill the great goddess. She had the power to burn out their eyes if they were anywhere near her. If she didn’t just set them all alight. He glanced at Hisshah. She was so full of hate, perhaps she hated her mother, too?
“Perhaps the great goddess would not want him too humiliated,” he ventured.
Hisshah pressed her lips together. “He will not show weakness by complaining,” she said, with notably false confidence, and added:
“Be silent now.”
And she hastened her pace. Ranowr’s heart smiled within him. She didn’t trust her mother. And that probably meant she hated her.
Though she probably feared her, too. How could you not fear the great power of fire born from the mind? In a way, it was a pity that the younger Liskash had only the small power of-
Ranowr blinked. A thought scurried, like a little seed-eating beast in dry grass. His mind stalked, ready to pounce.
That night Ranowr cornered Tral away from the others.
“You can talk to the females’ healer,” he said. “I need to know how many females and kits there are. Also I need to know what supplies they have charge of, where such are located and how much they have. I will find out how many of us there are.”
“Are you trying to take over the steward’s job?” Tral asked, puzzled.
“No, I am preparing us to leave. I will free the prisoner and he will lead us to thousands of free Mrem. He doesn’t know that yet, but if we come with our own supplies I don’t think he can complain.”
Tral was aghast. “Free?” he said and went silent. “What are thousands?” he asked at last. “Are they soldiers?”
“Thousands is a number. But I think they all are soldiers; if they were not, would not the Liskash have killed them or made them slaves?”
Agreement dawned in the healer’s eyes, and his astonishment-slack face firmed.
“We just have to find them and we’ll be too many for the Liskash to attack.”
